October 28, 2006

BG's Paris Diary Week 4

Its been a peaceful week in Paris. I spent most of the time mulling over a particularly painful paper. Anyway, some of the highlights:We got dressed up and went to see L'Elisir d'amore the Opera Bastille. It was a very interesting experience, sort of like a musical except the actors/actresses sung in Italian and there were subtitles in french which I barely understood. But it sounded nice and with a little debriefing at the beginning managed to follow the story through. Opera fashion-wise, there were a wide array of it, from jeans and tee to dresses, depending on how you feel.

Although I was slightly disappointed at the modern austere decor of the Opera Bastille(left)- I'd always imagined the opera to be richly decorated and regale. Maybe I should've went to the Opera Royal. Afterwards, we walked around the streets of Bastille(right), and I must say, its quite a lively area at night with lots of bars and restuarants. Also went to see a movie (The Queen- which surprisingly was quite a good movie) at the Odeon. Again, a very crowded and youthful area with lots of restuarants. I must go back some time in the day to wander around!Then today, we went to Versaille. It was slightly disappointing though as they've already covered all the statues in the gardens for the winter, there were huge constructions in the middle of the castle and garden, some of the gardens were closed- October is not a good time to visit Versaille. We ended up rowing a boat (left) in the gardens of Versaille, which was quite cool. Did you know that the oarsman is supposed to row backwards? It took us a while to figure it out as this little kid completely ousted us as we struggled to get in the right direction. Then we had a tour inside, which was quite glamorous and it all just makes me want to go see Marie Antoinette all the more!

15 Comments:

Oh! I went to Paris this summer too! A lot of the things in Palace of Versaille were moved to the Louvre, so it's definitely worth checking out all that and other cool stuff at that museum. I'd like to watch the movie about Marie Antoinette too (just because I visited Paris and Versaille :-P).

Did you go to Champs Elysees yet? That street is so sandy, stinky, and noisy. Not very impressive at all.

Anyone know when Bluefly is doing their next sweepstakes? I see that LuxCouture has a sweepstakes for a Giorgio Brato handbag at http://www.luxcouture.com/sweepstakes/

Any other good sweepstakes out there? It helps with the holiday shopping list, so figured I’d start some postings on it so we can share info (sure we’re competing against each other but hey, we all improve chances of winning something when we know about them).

i agree with kiwi, if you wanted grandeur, then opera garnier would've been more impressive. the bastille opera is more modern (this translates into their interpretations of the operas themselves as well) and was constructed with the premise of making opera more accessible to the masses since garnier was considered very posh and sort of exclusive back in the day. i went to the same opera and wasn't blown away either. donizetti was a prolific composer and l'elisir d'amour isn't one of my favorites of his many works. anyway, it seems like you enjoyed paris regardless! :)